In addition to those mfunk mentions and the likely awards contenders Barry Jenkins' If Beale Street Could Talk and Scorsese's The Irishman, I'm hoping the new Malick (Radegund), Cuaron (Roma), Lee (Black Klansman), and Audiard (The Sisters Brothers) are all good enough to be part of the conversation. If James Gray's Ad Astra manages to sneak in before the end of the year, that's a possible contender as well, if it can overcome the apparent disinterest most of Hollywood has in Gray.

Well, okay, if we all want to be embarrassed when none of these movies get nominated as always happens, Chalamet's reps apparently cancelled most of their planned press for him this past month thinking they had a strong candidate to win next year with Beautiful Boy; Dan Fogelman of This is Us (but also Danny Collins (a good movie)) has a big ensemble movie at Amazon called Life Itself. The Bradley Cooper-directed Lady Gaga version of Star is Born is almost certainly going to have one or several of the Best Original Song nods regardless of quality.

I do have an opinion that ties into the Front Runner which is that the next movie that Hugh Jackman is in that's even kind of a good, 'safe' movie will probably end with him getting an Oscar. He's just become so incredibly well-liked I can't imagine it not happening soon.

The Irishman is coming in 2019 as I believe Scorsese is contracted to Paramount technically through the end of the year.

Along the lines of Chalamet potentially getting some love as The Next Big Thing, I have to imagine that if Mary, Queen of Scots is good enough to land Saoirse Ronan a fourth nomination by the age of 24 there'll be a major push for her to win.

Big Ben wrote:Perhaps I'm mistaken but didn't A Star is Born run into some production trouble? Maybe it was content? Something? I could have sworn a boogeyman showed up and messed with it in some capacity.

It was delayed from the Summer to a primo awards season date recently.

Big Ben wrote:I'll take this spot and say Kimmell's prediction will come true and Black Panther will be snubbed. I'd love to be wrong though.

The Academy are going to be desperate for people to tune in after the low-ratings of the last few years. A culturally zeitgeist blockbuster that pushes for inclusivity, is critically raved, is going to probably the highest grossing domestic movie, yeah it's everything the committee would hope for.

I mean, we did just wrap up an awards season that lasted pretty much from when Dunkirk's reviews first came out through to early March (considering that Get Out didn't really get the Oscar buzz until more of the rest of the year began to take shape). Just think a few weeks off might be good for everyone!

I've read some speculation on Twitter that there's a very good chance they'll do something serious to change the way Foreign Language film is tabulated, as it's just totally unfair that nearly half the films countries are submitting every year are French co-productions. Hopefully it doesn't make it worse like the recent changes to the Animated feature category, but other than throwing out the country submission process and making it just like a secondary free-for-all best picture race I don't really know what options they have!

Most significant:
-Best score and Original Song will now go through two rounds of voting with a preliminary shortlist of 15
-Documentaries are eligible to be submitted regardless of distribution assuming it has won a major festival award

Being nominated is not a guarantee of admission; the explanation for why Kobe Bryant was omitted wasn't because of personal reasons but because there wasn't enough evidence of intent to continue to innovate in the industry.

I'm thrilled by this: surely we're at the point now where something like 25% of the Academy wasn't part of the Academy before the OscarsSoWhite campaign began? All it'll result in, hopefully, are more crazy awards seasons where everything seems up in the air like last year's (and the general lack of any serious buzz beyond these first few trailers for some suspected players has been somewhat surprising, but makes me wonder if they're all terrified of the conversation becoming as exhausted next year)

I won't single anyone out, but there's quite a few new members who quite frankly haven't had an impressive body of work or even that many films to their credit to really hold up as a substantial body of work. I recall reading an article on Shane Black not too long ago and how he was repeatedly rejected for membership because collectively his films didn't have enough artistic merit - it was tough to argue against that, but looking through the actors' branch, they've really lowered the bar.

I mean I'm looking at that list and they even included Yoko Kanno who is a composer who works in Japanese animation. She's well known in those crowds for some jazzy tunes but they REALLY extended the outreach here. I'm not mad by any means but it should highlight just how far this outreach went.

On the other hand, many of the existing members pre-changes to membership were similarly unimpressive, but also hadn’t worked in the industry in decades. Thinking of these incoming members as a swap for those people, I think it’s a net gain.